


The Art of Tea

by ljs



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-18
Updated: 2010-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Season Seven, diverging after "Showtime," set a couple of months later. Of public and private rituals, and the proper way to make tea.</p><p>Written for Antennapedia's Rupertus Domesticus ficathon in 2007.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Tea

****

**1\. Warm the Pot.**

It’s almost 5:00.

Anya washes her hands faster, trying to eliminate all traces of the harshly scented cleaning products she’s been using at the Summers house. When the soap stings in an open paper cut, she winces but keeps going. Almost 5:00, almost 5:00...

Once she’s satisfied she’s free of pine cleanser, she moisturizes her hands. Slicks on lip gloss (but not too much, that would be rude. She’s sensitive about cleaning issues these days). Brushes out a tangle of newly blonde-streaked hair. Spritzes on perfume, just there in her cleavage.

This is just an everyday ordinary thing – or it is when he’s in town, not chasing after Potentials or ghost-leads on the First or mysterious _things_ he half-tells her about. She knows she shouldn’t be so happy, so bubbly dancy spinny, even though he’s been gone five days this time.

"It’s just tea," she tells herself in the mirror as she always does, then thumbs off a renegade smear near the bottom. Got to keep everything in order and clear.

With deliberate tread, one foot in front of the other, she walks out of her studio apartment and across the dark, badly fenestrated upper hallway of the converted old house. There, in battered brown, is 2C: the door to her neighbour’s.

Two knocks, too. Two seconds to wait, thinking this time the door won’t open; two seconds to feel that new sting in an open cut. Then, it’s fresh air when the door swings open – he likes the windows open at all times unless there’s a wildfire or immediate apocalyptic threat, while she usually keeps hers closed – and Rupert, barefoot, damp-haired, and visibly weary, is smiling at her. "There you are. I thought you might be late, so I could miss the bloody theme song this once."

"Too bad, and no! You know I like the handclaps." She allows herself to stroke his upper arm, feel the softness of his sweatshirt and the surprising, warm firmness of the muscle underneath. She wants to do more, so much more, but...

It’s just tea.

Speaking of– "So, have you started yet?" she says, and steps inside.

"No, not quite. Just filling the kettle. I’m running a bit late as well." His hand hovering near the small of her back, he moves her forward – she’s not sure if a full-contact touch would make her more flushed, more sensitive to him, although she’d like to see. But no, he’s steering her toward the kitchen area with just height and fingertips and... mind control, maybe.

She swallows hard before saying lightly, "Any problems? Need any help?"

"No. Just... no, thank you, Anya." He always says that. Mr Stubborn Independence, that’s what he is.

He slides around her and gets to the kettle first. He has a system; actually it’s the same system as everyone else who’s obsessive about tea, but it seems more meaningful when he does it. Thing is, she _wants_ to help him. "Can I warm the pot for you?"

"Already done." He smiles at her again. Oh, he’s _so_ tired, she can tell it by the grooves in his face that used to be laugh lines.

She wants to reach out again and soothe him. Instead she puts her hands behind her and leans on the table, hard. She’s trying to teach herself patience and anchor herself alone. It’s not going so well.

But she watches him, as she always does. He flicks the switch on the electric kettle. He cradles the teapot in both big hands, double-checking it for appropriate warmth. He opens the tin of specially grown organic "first flush" Darjeeling, then rattles the teaspoon inside–

"Bloody hell, I thought I had more left," he mutters.

She puts her hands on his waist for balance (she tells herself) and leans around to check too. "Oh. That’s only enough for a couple of pots."

He freezes up, painfully tight, just like he’d been when he got to Sunnydale with the Potentials. Repression, she’d thought then, she thinks now. He doesn’t like to face running out, or emptiness. He’s been facing much too much of both.

Anyway – "Kettle’s about to boil. You know you hate when that happens," she says, and he drops the spoon and leaps for the water before its goodness steams away.

She picks up the spoon and puts the right amount in the strainer for him (leaving only a couple of spoonfuls), puts the strainer in the appropriate afternoon teapot, then moves out of his way so he can pour the water the way he wants. Steam rises. She can feel the heat from there.

Patience. Boy, it sucks.

The steeping will take three and a half minutes. "I’ll go turn on the TV," she says. "Handclaps!"

"If you must," he sighs in an exaggerated comedic way.

His apartment, like her own, came furnished with cast-offs, but it’ll serve for right now. After he’d spent a couple of days on the floor at the Summers house and practically wrecked his back (which made him crankier than usual, in addition to pesky Ubervamps and the heartbreak of losing all the Watchers and also the stupid trip to talk to stupid Beljoxa’s Eye), she’d dragged him over here and signed him up so he could have a space of his own and a real bed. She’d gotten him the old TV too, even though he insisted he didn’t need such a pathetic concession to the idiot-box American culture, he’d get his news from NPR.

Their ritual of afternoon tea was his idea, though. Mostly.

She snaps on the television – it doesn’t even have a remote – which crackles alive on a commercial. One for the tax preparation company for which she’s working part-time, in fact: apocalypse might be coming, but the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t care. She finds that oddly comforting; well, that, along with the remnants of Magic Box e-business she and Rupert still conduct in between his work with the Potentials, her work keeping Slayer Central running and clean, and teatimes.

"Almost starting!" she calls.

"I know, I know." He turns around with his usual tea things on a tray: the pot, with the amusing monkey cozy she bought him; a plate of shortbread. No milk or sugar for delicate afternoon tea; he saves that for his P.G. Tips curl-your-hair brew in the morning. Not that she knows that other than in passing. Her time with Rupert is the early evening, while the sun begins to fall.

"Aren’t you going to sit down?" he says, and she drops down onto her side of the couch, kicks off her shoes, and sits cross-legged in happy anticipation.

He puts the tray down, then comes around to join her. She’s used now to pouring while his weight sinks onto the cushion – he insists she’s supposed to play ‘mother’ – and she just barely finishes filling both cups before it’s time for the theme song and she needs her hands free.

Just like always the stupid guitar starts first, and "So no one told you life was going to be this way," and she does the handclaps. Just like always he laughs, settles those broad shoulders back against the couch and those big bare feet up on the coffee table, and takes his first sip of tea.

She catches him up to speed on the episodes he missed while he was in Russia picking up the newbie Svetlana – they’ve gotten to the first Richard eps at this point in syndication, and she and Rupert agree that Monica should stay with him. (They know about the end of the story with Chandler, but sometimes writers get it wrong.) While situation comedy ensues onscreen, they talk desultorily about his trip to Moscow, and rumours of an old witch he was trying to find but couldn’t, and the difficulties of itemization without receipts. Mostly, however, they drink tea and eat shortbread and rest.

To be accurate, _he_ rests – she can see those deep grooves starting to ease – and she yearns. But she understands now that human life isn’t fair, and just because she wants it doesn’t mean it’ll happen, doesn’t mean she can make it happen. This is _frustrating,_ and a design flaw of the multiverse, but there she is.

And there are cookies, and after Friends is a Niles-and-Daphne episode of Frasier, which she and Rupert both enjoy, and there’s talk of him going downtown to Mr Lee’s Asian market tomorrow to get more tea.

"Can’t afford to run out of this too," Rupert says, looking down as he swirls the tea around in his flea-market china cup.

He looks passing sad, so she puts another piece of shortbread on his saucer. At that he smiles, still looking down, and drifts his fingers, almost touching but not quite, over her knee. She feels it anyway.

The light is changing outside, falling in gold, and his curtains billow in the breeze through the open window, and she takes another sip of her tea.

 

 ****

 **2\. Pour the almost boiling water over the tea leaves. Let the tea steep. Remove the leaves before it turns bitter.**

She’s at home, in the middle of figuring a particularly boring return when her cell phone rings. When she picks up her cell, she blinks – it’s Rupert, but it’s only 2:15, he almost never calls her like this.

"Rupert, what’s wrong?"

His voice on the phone sounds all frozen hurt. "Anya, I’m at Mr. Lee’s. Er, there seems to have been...trouble. It’s bad, it’s the First. Could you collect Willow and meet me here?"

She’s on her way out the door even before he finishes.

Willow, and that annoying Kennedy-person who’s become her shadow, are waiting on the sidewalk when Anya pulls up at the house on Revello Drive. There’s a moment of comedy-hesitation and almost pratfalls, which Anya usually would find funny but now is just irritating, before Willow gets in the front passenger seat and Kennedy in the back.

"Do you know what’s going on?" Anya says.

"Bringers," Willow says briefly, and clicks her seatbelt shut.

The fear settles heavy in the pit of Anya’s stomach. She punches down the gas pedal.

A few blocks from downtown, sirens start screaming, stuck on the same note, _bad bad bad bad_. Above the shops, thick black smoke rises, a visual to match the screaming. Anya blinks away the itchiness in her eyes and drives.

As they pass the empty lot where the Magic Box used to be, all loose cast foundation stones and blackened ground, she makes a fruitless wish just like she always does.

In front of the Asian market are fire trucks and firemen with water hoses on high, streams of water battling with the smoke. Gods, the place is trashed. Anya sees an ambulance with its back doors open, a stretcher with a covered figure being lifted in–

But before she can panic, she sees Rupert all alone at the end of the block. He’s holding something, and she sees a little blood.

Willow starts to say something, but Anya’s already found a parking place, and they jolt to a stop. Dying engine clicks, doors slam, sirens scream _bad bad bad_ , and they’re running to him.

"What _happened_?" Willow and Anya say together, high and higher. "Are you okay?"

He tries to smile and fails miserably. "It’s...when I got here, thirty minutes ago, I walked into the shop, only to find it overrun with Bringers, and Mr. Lee..." He stops, looks away. Anya moves closer and puts her hand on his arm. This close she can smell the blood, see the oozing cuts on his fingers, pain not being soaked up by the scrap of Bringer-habit he’s holding. He starts again. "They’d killed him. I was too late. Anyway, I managed to find an axe and take down one of the creatures, but... they were looking for something in the shop. I couldn’t... I managed to overturn a couple of oil lamps and do a spell, started a fire which made the sods run. But I couldn’t get Mr Lee out, and I don’t know what they were looking for. They left empty-handed, far as I could see." He laughs without humour. "And I don’t know why I called you all, really–"

"Because we can look at this problem fresh," Willow says, with that new calm she can summon occasionally between twitches.

Anya approves – Willow’s changes make Rupert ache a little less, she can tell. Also: "Rupert, you called Willow because maybe there’s some telling or divination she can do. I mean, hey, you got Bringer-material. That could be a focus to find out what they’re looking for."

"But divination, like, isn’t going to work unless there’s something from the shop too," Kennedy says, and it’s smug and unhelpful and Anya wants to smack her.

"I _would_ need...." Willow trails off, shrugs in silhouette.

Anya understands. Willow could probably go all uber-seeing witch even without the focus, but she’s scared, and who can blame her? Of course Anya _does_ still blame her, a little, but she gets it.

Rupert’s looking back at the shop, at the rising smoke and the flames underneath. _From beneath you it devours_... To distract herself from the dumb riddling evil, Anya closes her eyes and thinks of the interior of the shop before destruction and fire. Although Mr Lee was Chinese, he took the whole ‘Asian market’ concept literally, and the merchandise was from all over, jumbled together Japanese and Chinese and Korean and even Indian. Cheap, tacky trinkets in front (nice markup, though, and the UC Sunnydale kids liked to buy them); more expensive, better crafted goods and bladed weapons and loose stones in the back; in the middle, the imported foods and his excellent selection of–

"Tea!" she says, at the same time as Rupert.

"Do what now?" Willow says.

"We’ve got some tea left. From Mr Lee’s shop," Rupert says, and Anya feels a happy, guilty rush that he uses the first-person plural. "Not only connected to the shop, then, but–"

"Tasseomancy," Anya says brightly. "Read those leaves! Or start there, anyway."

Willow’s eyeing them both like they’re fugitives from an asylum, but then she says, "Sounds like a plan. Kinda." She plucks the damp brown material from Rupert’s hand and runs her thumb over it. A faint streak of rust-red is left on her finger, and she shudders.

But Anya’s still thinking while she idly rubs her hand up and down Rupert’s sleeve, trying to get him warm. "Wait just a second," she says, and she bolts past him toward the smoke and fire and _bad bad bad_. It reminds her of the lost Magic Box again, and she swallows inconvenient tears as she runs.

The yellow tape around the scene means ‘do not cross,’ she knows, but if she’s fast – she dips underneath it, feeling it pull at her hair, and then makes it to what used to be the front door.

In the rush of firefighters and EMTs and police and stuff, some of the merchandise has been scattered on the concrete. There, that’ll do – she picks up a shard of a cheap porcelain doll, blue-black against grey, sharp-edged still like a Bringer’s knife.

"Hey," a firefighter says from behind her.

Coughing even this close, she turns and fakes a smile. "Someone could hurt themselves on this! I’m just cleaning up!" she says, and bolts again. More smoke, more stickiness against her hair, and then she’s back with Rupert and the others.

He catches at her sleeve, holds her in place. "What the bloody hell was that in aid of?"

"I picked up more of a focus! Just in case...." But he’s glaring, and she feels stupid, and so she goes quiet. Patience, she tells herself.

"That’ll work as a backup, Anya," Willow says, and she takes the china shard and wraps it in the Bringer-cloth. "We’d better get going. Where should we–"

"My flat," Rupert says shortly. His hand lifts away, and then he says more softly, "Christ, Anya, I’m so sorry. I got blood on you."

Yes, there’s a smear on her new silk sweater. "Oh well, not the first time. Except–" She pounces on his hands, turns them up to the light. She can see the nicks and cuts better this way. "Those look bad. I’ve got antibiotic cream at my place, I’ll fix you up before spellcasting."

He tries to pull away, but she won’t let him, and he says, "Anya, that’s not important."

"Well, if you’re not going to realize you’re important just because you’re you... think of infection, leading to necrosis and fingers falling off, which means you won’t be able to help Buffy and the cause." She drops his hands. "Come on, you guys, let’s go."

When they get to Anya’s car, he stops her before she can get in. The unmarked backs of his fingers drift down over her stained sleeve and then up over her cheek, closer to touching her, making contact. He seems like he’s going to say something, but then he just shakes his head and goes around to the front passenger seat.

As Anya drives, she keeps catching Willow’s accusing stare in the rearview mirror, but nobody’s talking.

Once they get to the apartment house, she runs up the stairs first. It’s to get the antibiotic cream, she tells herself. It’s so she doesn’t hear if Rupert says something dismissive about her when Willow asks.

Everything seems normal enough in Rupert’s apartment when she gets there, though. Willow and Kennedy are sort of looking around without looking around, talking to each other in under-voices, and Rupert’s washing his hands in the kitchen. When she comes up behind him, he says without turning around, "I really...just, er, thank you, Anya."

She wants to say something meaningful and not awkward or strangely literal, some impossible thing to make him feel better about one more senseless death, something to make him understand how _important_ he is. But she can’t do it. She sticks with, "No problem. Give me your hands, preferably not wet."

He’s almost smiling when he turns around, wiping his hands on a convenient paper towel. "I have to say, your focus on the practicalities is... restful. Um, welcome."

It’s ridiculous that such a mild statement makes her glow, and she tells herself to stop, but she can’t. Instead, she grabs his hands and then smooths cream over his hurts, works it into his skin. She hopes he thinks that her flush is due to blood rushing to her downbent head.

Of course, since she’s still blushing when she looks up and sees him gazing at her, she knows that’s pretty much hopeless. Curse her winter-apocalypse pallor.

In the living area, Willow clears her throat pointedly. "Okay, if First Aid has concluded, we’ve got mojo to muster. I’m thinking a modified tea ceremony, what do you think?"

"Don’t you need another room for that? When my mother took us to Japan..." Kennedy starts, but clams up at Willow’s Look of Hush.

"Yes, well, a traditional tea ceremony in fact does require that sense of retirement, of separation from this world," Rupert says.

"But Willow emphasized modification, bending and stretching it to make it suit. Anyway, I’ve seen tea ceremonies which didn’t need that much old separation... they weren’t in this dimension, though," Anya says.

Willow’s wearing a faraway look. "I think I got it – we’ll need a place to sit on the floor, and candles–"

"I have those," Anya says, and she’s out the door and across the hall in a flash.

When she comes back with four unscented, long-burning pillars suitable for ritual, the curtains are drawn, and the sofa cushions are arranged in what passes for a circle, on the floor beneath the big window. In the centre square left by the arrangement is Rupert’s tea tray, with a single cup and the almost empty tin, the bit of Bringer cloth, and the shard of china doll.

Rupert’s watching the kettle. She can hear the bubbles starting.

Kennedy and Willow are already sitting next to each other on two of the cushions. Willow gazes at nothing – already meditating, Anya guesses – but Kennedy looks up and all but snaps her fingers for the candles.

Slapping a Potential is not a good start for a white-magic divination ritual, Anya tells herself as she kicks off her shoes. Sedately, one foot in front of the other, she walks to the cushion and takes her place opposite Willow.

And then, concentrating, she sets the candles in their right pattern, one in front of each participant’s place.

As she puts the last one down, Rupert arrives with the kettle. He uses one hand on Anya’s shoulder to balance as he sits down on the last cushion, he leans in hard.

She closes her eyes and holds steady for them both. She doesn’t open her eyes until that warm weight is removed.

Willow’s eyes are shut now, her hands loose on her knees. With a gesture and a thought she lights the candles, four stars in a dim room, and then silently pours the two last lonely teaspoons of Mr Lee’s Darjeeling into the single cup. Tea ceremonies are to be silent, Anya remembers.

Rupert pours the water from the kettle into the cup. Steam rises. The tea leaves and the candleflames dance. Time passes.

When the brew is swirling a perfect brown, Willow takes the cup and drinks. Then she hands it to Rupert.

He drinks slowly, deliberately, as if he’s thinking through every taste. Then he brushes the back of his fingers of his free hand – full, shiver-making contact – against Anya’s thigh before he gives her the cup.

Anya breathes deep, steam rising inside and out. The mouthful summons memory – Rupert laughing here as he drinks, with handclaps to punctuate; tea in the Magic Box before it went away, the two of them sharing a cup without thinking; longer ago, a different world, a silent, gold-lit retreat in the midst of blood and death. She’s getting confused, time’s passing–

She hands the cup to Kennedy, and then rests her hand on Rupert’s socked foot to keep her here.

Willow’s picked up the Bringer cloth and the shard of china, and she’s running her fingers over both, humming a little to herself. Then, smoothly, she puts the fragments of loss in her lap, and takes the cup for the last drink. When she finishes, she puts the cup down in the centre of the tray.

Anya can’t read the pattern of the leaves from this angle, but Rupert makes an odd cut-off gesture. Willow nods, then claps her hands once. The candleflames rise, streaming up to the ceiling for a breath, before falling away to nothing.

"So, what with swirly leaves and vision," Willow says in an ordinary Willow voice, as she puts the broken and torn things back on the tray, "I’m seeing a definite weapon theme. The First is looking for something sword-y, or possibly axe-y, that can destroy his servants with a single stroke. And, um... they didn’t find it."

Rupert touches the shard of china doll with his index finger. "Mr Lee’s death was for nothing," he says, and there’s nothing but cold and loss in his voice.

Anya clasps the ball of his foot and holds on, so he doesn’t get lost in the badness. "No, Rupert. Because we’ve got a chance now," she says.

He nods without looking at her, and he covers her knee with his palm. Full contact.

Willow sort of flutters her hands at him, Kennedy clears her throat, and then by muttered agreement they all collect the stuff and get to their feet and get ready to leave. Buffy should know about this, of course. There’s something concrete to research.

But Anya also sees him pick up the empty tin of tea and gaze inside its emptiness, feels again his cold and loss. She has to do something.

She drives them all to Revello Drive, but once they get there, she takes Willow aside. "Can I borrow your computer and internet connection before the meeting? I need to order something. And I promise I won’t mess up your bookmarks, or look at your collection of lesbian porn–"

"Gee, thanks," Willow says. Then, a hesitation, and a weird question: "Um, Anya, did you know Xander might have met someone? At Home Depot, and don’t even ask..."

Anya _has_ heard whispers about this, in fact, Potentials murmuring in corners. She feels a small pang, a regret or two, but new hurts and insecurities have swallowed up the old. "Yes, good for him. I hope the two of them are very happy together nailing things." When Willow starts laughing for no reason, she adds, "So can I use the computer?"

"You’re using it to get Giles something, aren’t you," Willow says, still laughing. Anya nods, and Willow gives her a soft patchouli hug. "Come on, I’ll get you set up."

While the meeting starts downstairs, Anya surfs, but she doesn’t go far. The shop she’s remembered in Los Angeles does have online ordering; better, it has overnight shipping. That will take a little bite out of her savings, but what the hell, it’s practically the end of the world. After she clicks, she stares out Willow’s window. It’s dark tonight. She can still smell smoke in the desert air. But looking out at dark, she thinks of retreats from the world, private and gold-lit in the midst of blood and death.

When she goes downstairs to join the tense discussion already in progress, Rupert’s saved a seat for her beside him on the couch. He actually looks better now – well, he’s working, that explains it. Even if he’s arguing with Buffy (and these days he is, it’s disturbing), he’s got a plan. After the shouting and the bad feelings come the recovery-calm and the tentative plans for research. Dawn’s on the case too, and of course Willow. They’ll do some UC Sunnydale time with Rupert tomorrow. Anya’s got her own research task, to investigate Mr Lee’s wholesale weapons suppliers.

The meeting runs late, but when it’s done, Rupert walks out with her as a matter of course and gets in her car; he takes off his glasses and stows them in his jacket, then leans back and closes his eyes. They ride in silence to the apartment house, but it’s a good, warm kind of quiet. When they get out and they start up the stairs, his hand in the small of her back steers her.

Full contact still, even with all the nicks and cuts. Still shiver-making.

He doesn’t let go when they reach their hallway. Instead he moves her toward her door, then turns her so her back’s against it. He’s faster and stronger than she’d expect – she remembers that from Willow’s spell last year. She remembers a whole lot of things from Willow’s spell.

He’s tall in the dark, and warm, and leaning in hard.

"Anya," he says quietly, "I just wanted... Er, we didn’t manage our tea this evening, what with the ... everything."

"No, we didn’t. But I just ordered a new tin, it’ll be delivered for us tomorrow." She beams at him. "It’s the same kind, too! Specially grown, organic ‘first flush’ Darjeel–"

But his mouth is on hers, and she’s on her toes as he pulls her in, and she forgets what she’s saying. He tastes wonderful, rich and hot and perfectly brewed, and his hands, one moving on her back, the other catching her wrist and pinning it above her head....

She loses herself in what they’re doing. It is a more than excellent reward for patience–

Until he pulls away, and she’s left standing there against the door, wet and aching.

"Tea tomorrow, then, Anya," he says in an unfamiliar, roughened voice. "Sleep well."

 

 ****

 **3\. Drink. Savour.**

It’s almost 5:00.

Anya gazes at herself in the spotless bathroom mirror. Newly brushed hair, yes; mascara and lip gloss, yes; carefully applied perfume, yes; brushed teeth, yes. She’s not entirely sure optimism is called for, but it can’t hurt.

She goes out into her living area and gets her new tin of tea, which was delivered just after noon. She got a couple of extras at the same time. Again, optimism.

This doesn’t feel like an everyday thing.

Rupert’s been out most of the day, working. She saw him leave this morning – he turned and looked back up at the house, caught her gazing from the window, and then smiled and half-waved, as much as he ever would. He seemed okay, he walked fast. That cheerful sight was enough to get her going on her chores: several hours of tax prep, a quick trip downtown to talk to Mr Lee’s shop-neighbours. She’s got the names of Mr Lee’s part-time help, and some leads to pursue regarding delivery of sharp pointy things.

She’ll talk to him about it soon enough, but she hopes that tea comes first.

With deliberate tread, one foot before the other, she crosses the dark, badly fenestrated hallway. Softly she knocks at the door of 2C.

The door opens on fresh breeze and flickers, and there’s Rupert smiling – barefoot, damp-haired soapy clean, no glasses, loose untucked shirt over his jeans like always, but easier than usual. "Anya, there you are," he says normally enough, then swoops in for a kiss in a non-normal way. She almost drops the damn tea.

But he’s just greeting her, despite her immediate arousal. "Come in," he says, and steers her inside. "I’ve got the tea-things ready, but I waited for you."

"Oh. Good. But I’m actually early, sorry," she says sort of stupidly.

"I’d say you were right on time." He plucks the tea from her hand. "Shall I start the kettle?"

"Okay." Gods, she _does_ sound stupid, sort of kiss-drunk after a mere taste. She blinks, and looks around.

She’d left her candles after the ritual yesterday – he has them lined up on the coffee table, all four flickering merrily in protective glass. The curtains are open to show the falling light, and fresh breeze through the open windows flutters a new throw on the sagging couch and a couple of new silk-covered cushions, red and gold. "It looks nice in here," she says.

He smiles over his shoulder. "Um, yes, good. Had a bit of a clean-up after my time in the library. We’ve got a lead or two on that weapon, by the way." He turns on the water, tests it with his wrist, then warms the pot.

This mundane domestic activity and the exchange of information are beginning to drive her crazy. Patience can only go so far– "Me too. But, um, Rupert, can I just check something? Is tonight’s conversation and tea intended to lead to sexual pleasure? Because I’m okay if it’s not, although I really really would like it to, but I just want to know."

He carefully puts the pot down on the draining board and wipes his hands before he turns around. He’s smiling, all nerves and purpose, and then he leans back against the counter, tips his head, surveys her. "Do you know, Anya, that I had... well, a vision, during our ritual yesterday?"

"No I didn’t, and that doesn’t answer my question."

"Just wait." He smiles deeper, quieter. "The magics opened me up, I was getting a bit lost...Anyway, I saw us here, having tea, and the world was...dear God, it sounds ridiculous, but the world was gold. _You_ were gold. And the things I’ve been worried about with you, our respective pasts and dark present and, um, worries, just... dissolved. I wanted to be there. Or rather, here." His smile quirks, still deep and quiet. "So, the answer to your question is yes. It is."

The world shimmers, gold around the edges – oh, but that’s just tears. So dumb to cry when a good wish is granted, she thinks, and then she’s running the few steps to him, and he catches her.

The kissing’s better than good. He’s concentrated as always, but also surprisingly wild, a guy who can wield a bladed weapon as well as a catalogue of rare books: he lifts her up on the counter for a different angle, pulls her hard against him, encourages her to wrap her legs around him so he can press in, so he can pour her into his hands–

Too wild for a second, and she smacks the back of her head against an upper cabinet. She’s too busy kissing him to even say ‘ow,’ but he must hear the impact. "Need more room," he says hoarsely, and then he’s carrying her over and dropping her onto the sofa.

Then he’s on top of her, and it’s all heat and silk under her head and under her hands. She sends her fingers exploring under his shirt and jeans, she drinks him in with her mouth. He feels and tastes so wonderful underneath.

The candles shimmer gold in her peripheral vision, and somewhere the curtains are flapping, she hears the beating like a hundred wings against a dark sky.

He pushes her up against the arm of the sofa even as he goes down, and she has to stop her attentions to enjoy his mouth whispering words she can’t hear on her skin, his fingers finding her and sliding in. Gods, he knows what he’s doing.

Head back, body arched to meet him, she’s got her fingers in his hair when she comes the first time.

Then she’s all over him, and they wrestle him out of his clothes. He’s long and hard, not too thick, just right, and she plays with him as he finds a condom in his discarded jeans. Together they protect themselves, and then he’s in so deep, so _perfect_.

She closes her eyes, rises to meet him again, lets the goodness happen. She’s got her fingers in his hair when he comes with a rough whisper of her name.

Overheated and happy, they lie entwined on the sofa, awash in gold in a darkened room. He’s heavy, but she doesn’t let him pull out when he makes a half-hearted move to do so. "No, stay there," she says.

But she also remembers an important part of their private time. She gets her hands above them both, and she does the requisite theme-song handclaps. "That always marks the beginning!" she says brightly, still breathless. "Got to honour the ritual, you know?"

"Oh, _Anya_ , you’re sodding perfect," he says, his whole body relaxing in a shuddered laugh. He’s still laughing when he kisses her, in a way light and delicate and to be savoured.

Then, in a darkened room awash in gold, far away from the world, he gets up and makes them both a pot of tea.


End file.
